Why Serbia lifted Kosovo`s autonomy
There is always intense pressure in wartime for media outlets to
serve as propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of
the journalist is to present the world in all its complexity, so
that people can make up their own minds, the propagandist
simplifies the world in order to mobilize the public behind a
common goal.
One basic simplification is to interpret a conflict in terms of
villains and victims, with no qualification allowed for either
role. Conflicts in the real world rarely fall into such simple
categories: Particularly in ethnic conflicts, both sides usually
have legitimate grievances that are often used to justify a new
round of abuses against the other side.
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S. news
outlets usually begin with Serbia`s revocation of the Kosovo
Albanians` autonomy in 1989. This was a crucial decision, one of
the major reasons for the rise of the KLA. It also destabilized
the Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country`s breakup.
Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted
Kosovo`s autonomy. The article, from the New York Times in 1987,
gives important background to this decision. Although the article
is easily found in the Nexis database, little to none of this
information has found its way into contemporary coverage of
Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere else.
Also for the troubles in Balkans and Kosovo is blamed Serbia`s
`strongman` Mr. Milosevic. From NYT articles one can see that
Albanian separatists` quest for an "ethnically pure" Kosovo as
part of Greater Albania started 1981, when Mr Milosevic was not
even in politics. (At that time he was a bank manager.)
If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one would
likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was written 12
years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of the world, and the
New York Times would not seem to have any particular interest in
defending Serbs or attacking Albanians.
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The New York Times
November 1, 1987,
Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1;
"In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil
Conflict"
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic
friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying
possibility of ``civil war`` in a land that lost one-tenth of its
population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against
the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of
society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks,
killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian
cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
Vicious Insults
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and
regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have
exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn
down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been
knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders
to rape Serbian girls.
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia
and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and
Croats.
-- Radicals` Goals
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an
interview, is an ``ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia,
southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania
itself.`` That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the
southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater
Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than
Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana
is giving them material assistance.
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau
ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic
Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million.
The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.
-- Worst Strife in Years
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic
Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially
strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in
1981 - an ``ethnically pure`` Albanian region, a ``Republic of Kosovo``
in all but name.
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ``the worst
in the last seven years.`` ...
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia`s problems
with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some
Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far
beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of
1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
``We`ve already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,`` said a
member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic
minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.
-- Attacks on Slavs
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic
Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320
ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half
of them characterized as severe.
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic
Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren
last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic
Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian
women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the
Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police
officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling
the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal
Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.
-- `Lebanonizing` of Yugoslavia
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ``Lebanonizing`` of their
country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern
Ireland.
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party`s presidency, spoke in an
interview of the prospect of ``two Albanias, one north and one south,
like divided Germany or Korea,`` and of ``practically the breakup of
Yugoslavia.`` He added: ``Time is working against us.``
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula,
told the army`s party organization in September of efforts by ethnic
Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ``Between 1981 and 1987 a total
of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality
were discovered in the Yugoslav People`s Army,`` he said. Admiral
Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for
``killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage,
breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition,
desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.``
-- Concerns Over Military
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi,
had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the
speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to
start their mandatory year of military service.
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate,
one-quarter of the army`s 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic
Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human
timebombs.
He said the army had ``not been provided with details relevant for
assessing their behavior.`` But a number of Belgrade politicians said
they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in
Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They
reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become
involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil
service, schools and factories.
Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and
suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.
-- Region`s Slavs Lack Strength
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they
are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of
them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and
houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership
pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy
under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late
September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed
Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade`s party organization, the
country`s largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an
appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted
the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for
``the policy of the hard hand.``...
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in
Pristina that ``relations are cold`` between the ethnic Albanians and
Serbs of the province, that there were too many ``people without
hope.``...
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through
amendments to the constitution. ...The hope is that something will be
done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic
Albanians back into Yugoslavia`s mainstream.